Culture Fiend

Week 3: Master Class with Isaac Layman, or A Little Dab(ble) Won’t Do

Class instructed to double down.

Posted by: Adriana Grant on Jan 27, 2012 at 09:30AM 0 Comments

Isaac Layman chills on the front stoop of my building after our first in-person studio visit.

Editor’s note: For this new four-week series, Culture Fiend’s art writer Adriana Grant has enrolled in a master class with Seattle photographer Isaac Layman at the Frye. This is her story.—LD

“I know a number of you have felt unable to put in the 20 hours a week,” Isaac started his email to the students of his month-long master class. His critically acclaimed solo exhibit at the Frye just closed, but he’s plenty busy teaching 11 artists (including myself) to rededicate themselves to their art practice.

“I understand it seems difficult and that it takes time away from other activities,” his email continues, “but it’s entirely doable and necessary if you wish to become critically involved with your art. Dabbling won’t get you where you want to go. Make your art a priority. […] When you do that your art will get better.”

Isaac’s right. Last week I put in 7.5 hours writing poetry—my chosen art practice—and this week, I’ve already made up that time in five days. It’s not easy, but I’m doing what I feel I ought to do, and that creates its own feel-good feedback loop. I’m creating more poetry, better poetry, and it’s easier to return to work with smaller gaps between writing sessions.

Ironically, as Isaac admonishes his students to commit more time to their artwork, he’s doing the opposite. Isaac’s teaching role has thrust him out of his studio and into those of his students. He’s had two one-hour studio visits with each of 11 students. This social labor reminds Isaac to seek more balance in his own life, between his artwork, family, and friends.

As for balance in my own life, I’m putting that aside, as I promised to get closer to the 20-hours-a-week studio requirement, and have a chapbook ready to present for the last class, tomorrow. I have many more hours to go to make that goal, and to be proud of what I’ll show for my month of labor. I might just have to pull the all-nighter Isaac suggested last week.

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Tags: Visual Art, frye art museum, Master Class , Isaac Layman

Isaac Layman and ‘The Toughest Art-Making Month of My Life’

We embark on a four-week master class with a local photographer. And without a camera.

Posted by: Adriana Grant on Jan 12, 2012 at 09:00AM 0 Comments

Class is in session.

Editor’s note: For this new four-week series, Culture Fiend’s art writer Adriana Grant has enrolled in a master class with Seattle photographer Isaac Layman at the Frye. This is her story.—LD

I enrolled in photographer Isaac Layman’s master class expecting to use my camera. But during our preclass tete-a-tete, we spoke more about poetry than pictures. Though Layman is known as a photographer—his striking large-scale, hyperrealist images are in their first solo museum exhibit at the Frye (through January 22) and have been reviewed by NPR, Artweek, and Art in America—his class isn’t about a specific media. It’s about building one’s creative practice.

In jeans and sneakers, Layman appears easy-going, but when he’s talking about art, his dark eyes flash and he throws his arms about.

“This is going to be,” he warns, “the toughest art-making month of your life.”

During class, Layman recounts part of a David Sedaris story. “Life is a four-burner stove. One burner is family, one is career, one is friendship, and one is health. To be good at what you do, you have to turn off one burner. To be really good, you have to turn off two.”

Our first assignment: spend 20 hours a week making art. My project focuses on a 20-hour writing commitment, and though I have no specific poem output in mind—Layman suggested 40 poems, but I told him that was practically a book—I’m in the process of kick-starting my own writing practice. I’m hoping his hard-core dedication proves contagious.

I’m not shutting off a burner, but I’ve got several hours of writing to do before our next meeting.

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Tags: Visual Art, frye art museum, Master Class , Isaac Layman

Curator Robin Held to Leave the Frye

She’s going to head up nonprofit Reel Grrls.

Posted by: Allison Williams on Dec 14, 2011 at 06:00PM 0 Comments

Photo: Ryan McVay

Robin Held shows off a dark, dripping ensemble.

As reported by Jen Graves at The Stranger, the Frye Museum of Art’s chief curator, Robin Held, is leaving to head up youth nonprofit Reel Grrls. She leaves in February after six years at the First Hill institution, and director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker hasn’t announced a replacement.

When we asked Robin Held to describe her personal style last year, she called it, “dripping, dragging, dark.” But her tenure at the Frye was more than simply dark—she added to the museum’s collection of 19th-century paintings by commissioning art that was both multidisciplinary and daring.

In March, she spoke to Seattle Met about the Degenerate Art Ensemble, a local performance art group that she brought to the Frye. The troupe takes its name from a German art exhibit the Nazis disapproved of; and DAE shows the same kind of fearlessness in its multimedia work: dance, music, video, and sculpture, including a ninja battle skirt. Held encouraged experimentation, and her influence at the Frye will be missed.

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Tags: Visual Art, frye art museum

Isaac Layman Examines ‘Paradise’ at the Frye

The Seattle photographer searches for divinity in household objects.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Nov 22, 2011 at 03:30PM 0 Comments

Isaac Layman, Untitled, 2011. Photographic construction, ink-jet on paper. 59 × 78 in. Collection of the artist.

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Isaac Layman, Untitled, 2011. Photographic construction, ink-jet on paper. 59 × 78 in. Collection of the artist.

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Isaac Layman, Land Grab, 2011. Photographic construction, ink-jet on paper. 59 × 98 in. in. Collection of the artist.

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Isaac Layman, Untitled, 2011. Photographic construction, ink-jet on paper. 83 × 59 in. Collection of the artist.

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Isaac Layman, Untitled, 2011. Photographic construction, ink-jet on paper. 87 × 120 in. Collection of the artist.

For a year, award-winning photographer Isaac Layman was holed up in his home studio in Wallingford, searching for a glimmer of paradise in the mundane—an ice cube tray, a crinkled piece of paper, even a pile of soggy tissues. “I don’t typically look at my oven for three days,” Layman said, but he would spend up to five hours photographing a single household object to create the 20+ wall-sized images now on display at the Frye in his first museum exhibit. His minimalist approach—most pieces are untitled, and some frames seem to hold blank canvases—might frustrate some, until you hear Layman’s story. Those four panels of glass? They’re actually windows from his house, which he realized he always looked through, but rarely looked at. A few were dirty—but paradise isn’t perfect. It’s full of contradictions, Layman said, and the tiniest things can turn into fantastic vistas. “You can get lost in an ice cube tray.”

View the slideshow for more images from the exhibit.

Isaac Layman: Paradise is at Frye Art Museum thru Jan 22. Daily admission to the museum is free. Join the artist for a tour of the exhibit on Jan 3, 10, & 17 at 2pm; cost is $5, free for members. If you’re a photographer, Layman is also offering a master class through the month of January.

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Tags: Visual Art, frye art museum

Monkeys, Martyrs, and Gabriel von Max at the Frye

The museum hosts the first-ever U.S. solo show of the 19th-century painter.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Jul 19, 2011 at 12:15PM 0 Comments

Image courtesy Don Tuttle.

Gabriel von Max, Entsagung (Renunciation), after 1900. Oil on wood panel. 10 3/16 × 7 5/16 in. The Daulton-Ho Collection.

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Image courtesy Don Tuttle.

Gabriel von Max, Entsagung (Renunciation), after 1900. Oil on wood panel. 10 3/16 × 7 5/16 in. The Daulton-Ho Collection.

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Image courtesy Eduardo Calderón.

Gabriel von Max, Botaniker (The Botanists), after 1900. Oil on canvas. 25 × 31 3/4 in. Frye Art Museum, Charles and Emma Frye Collection, 1952.117.

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Image courtesy Eduardo Calderón.

Gabriel von Max, Märtyrerin am Kreuz (The Christian Martyr), 1867. Oil on paper affixed to canvas. 48 × 36 3/4 in. Frye Art Museum, Charles and Emma Frye Collection, 1952.116.

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Image courtesy bpk, Berlin / Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Neue Pinakothek / Art Resource, NY.

Gabriel von Max, Der Anatom (The Anatomist), 1869. Oil on canvas. 53 3/4 × 74 5/8 in. Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Neue Pinakothek, inv. no. 14680.

Symbols such as the gorilla and human skulls (top left) and moth (bottom right) hint at the life cycle from origin to decay, says Frye curator Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker. “It’s the whence and the whither: where we have come from, and where were are going.”

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Image courtesy Eduardo Calderón.

Gabriel von Max, Mater Dolorosa, after 1900. Oil on canvas laid on Masonite. 26 13/16 × 22 7/16 in. The Daulton-Ho Collection.

Mater Dolorosa, the Virgin Mary, mourns the death of her son Jesus, alone at the foot of the cross. “Max has depicted Mary’s flesh as ‘mortified,’ in a state of decomposition and transformation, to indicate both her own mortality and her profound grief.” —Frye curator Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker

Prague-born painter Gabriel von Max isn’t for everyone. Ever since his major debut in 1867 with The Christian Martyr—depicting a female saint on a crucifix, cast in pallid shades of blue and gray—art consumers have been put off by his morbid tendencies. It doesn’t help that Max, an admirer of the occult, séances, and scientific theory, came into his prime during the Victorian era. Darwinism wasn’t exactly fodder for portraits back then.

Despite critical acclaim, the artist’s technical skills have long been overshadowed by his subject matter, and his work hasn’t shown in a solo exhibit in the United States until now. On July 7 the Frye opened Gabriel von Max: Be-Tailed Cousins and Phantasms of the Soul, a collection of more than 30 Max paintings—with The Christian Martyr, part of the Frye’s founding collection, at its center—as well as woodcuts on the theme of Faust; family photos that show Max holding joke séances; and a study on his relationship with monkeys.

And wow, were there monkeys. Max and his second wife (and former mistress) Ernestine lived with primates for decades; he showed great respect for the animals, using them as models for his later work. Paintings The Botanists and Renunciation depict melancholic capuchin monkeys: Their eyes show depth and curiosity, as they thoughtfully examine a vase of flowers like furry horticulturalists. While Max was a formidable artist, he was also a scientist and avid collector who nearly bankrupted himself putting together a trove of 60,000-80,000 anthropological artifacts (read: lots of mummies and skulls). But his dedication to naturalism is best exhibited in his portraits of beautiful women, dead and alive. Their facial features are shockingly realistic—so much so that World War I soldiers used to take postcard reproductions of Max’s ladies to the front line, says Frye curator Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker. “All these strange paintings” could provide some comfort, too.

For more on the exhibit, view the slideshow.

Gabriel von Max: Be-Tailed Cousins and Phantasms of the Soul is on display at the Frye through Oct 30.

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Tags: Visual Art, frye art museum

Fantasy Frye-land

Oil paintings to the right, “whimsically disturbing” performance art to the left.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Mar 15, 2011 at 12:00PM 1 Comments

Photo: Courtesy Bruce Tom

Degenerate Art Ensemble, Sonic Tales, 2009.

(Originally published in March 2011 issue.) Bet Charles and Emma Frye never saw this coming: Sixty years after donating their collection of late nineteenth-century German paintings to Seattle, wildly surreal multimedia now shares a wall with bucolic landscapes. And around the corner from the gilt-framed oil paintings stands a ceiling-high sculpture—a coy giantess who lifts the hem of her skirt and beckons you to browse a video collage beneath the folds.

The latest avant-garde explosion at the Frye is courtesy of Degenerate Art Ensemble, a Seattle-based performance art group that defies definition… They embrace all disciplines—with influences ranging from punk rock to Butoh to fairy tales—to create theater that’s been called “whimsically disturbing” and eminently memorable.

For its museum debut, DAE will showcase costumes, props and video clips from past performances— including 2006’s Cuckoo Crow and 2009’s Sonic Tales—plus new work (such as the aforementioned giantess). Frye deputy director Robin Held and DAE coartistic directors Haruko Nishimura and Joshua Kohl will hold an informal conversation about the exhibit on its opening day, Friday, March 19, at 2pm, but you can also get the rundown on DAE in Suzanne Beal’s article ‘Fantasy Frye-land’ in our March issue.

Degenerate Art Ensemble will showcase its work from March 19-June 19 at Frye Art Museum. Admission is free.

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Tags: Visual Art, frye art museum, Degenerate Art Ensemble, Performance Art

Art After-Hours: Where to Go This First Thursday

Museums are free, galleries stay open late. So…many…choices…

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Feb 03, 2011 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

At Wing Luke: Gene Tagaban, Henare Tahuri and Tawera Tahuri, Ritual of Encounter, 2010, acrylic on wood, 8’ x 15’. Photo and art courtesy of the Evergreen State College Longhouse.

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At Wing Luke: Gene Tagaban, Henare Tahuri and Tawera Tahuri, Ritual of Encounter, 2010, acrylic on wood, 8’ x 15’. Photo and art courtesy of the Evergreen State College Longhouse.

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In this installation, Letters home by Asian immigrants hang in the Welcome Hall of the Wing Luke Museum.

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Decades ago, Chinese elders met around the table in this Family Association Room at the East Kong Yick building.

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Designed by Ming Wong and hand-painted by Neo Chon Tech, Four Malay Stories, 2009. Acrylic emulsion on canvas. 96 × 120 in. Image courtesy Singapore Art Museum Collection/Frye Art Museum.

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Ming Wong, In Love for the Mood, 2009. Three-channel video installation. Image courtesy Singapore Art Museum Collection/Frye Art Museum.

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Ming Wong, Life of Imitation, 2009. Two-channel video installation. Image courtesy Singapore Art Museum Collection/Frye Art Museum.

This First Thursday, we’re celebrating Lunar New Year by starting at the Wing Luke Museum. Their latest exhibit, Cultural Confluence, tells the story of urbanites of mixed Asian-Native American descent and what it means to be “native” when so many live off the reservation. Stop in for the video tribute to woodcarver John T. Williams.

But it’s the historic hotel tour that’s the hidden gem here. Even if you’re a local, you might have missed the rickety staircase just to the left of the Wing Luke entrance in the same East Kong Yick building. Those creaky boards lead up to the remnants of a 100-year-old migrant hotel that used to be a second home for Chinese laborers. It’s like the set of an old western: hardwood everything, narrow hallways, low tin ceilings, rooms with the kind of metal-frame beds suited for military barracks and college dorm rooms. You almost feel like the tenants just stepped out for a minute, considering the wealth of abandoned photos, hairbrushes, steamer trunks, and a too-tiny faded vest and suit jacket, hanging neatly on the back of a chair. It’s a time warp in here.

There’s one room dedicated to Family Association meetings, with an long oaken table fit for a banquet hall, another room just for mahjong. And though we didn’t get to experience this, we hear that a couple in their eighties leads the tour and has lots of great slow-cooking stories to tell. For fans of the Underground Tour, this is a nerdy slice of paradise.

The tours are $8.95-$12.95 for 45 minutes, and you have to step out earlier in the day to catch them (they only run 10:30-3:30). But now that you’re out, you might as well swing by the Frye Art Museum on First Hill, where Singaporean artist Ming Wong has put together a very impressive collection of Southeast Asian movie memorabilia and new work exploring identity in its many forms—language, race, gender, nationality—through the lens of Singaporean cinema of the 1950s and ’60s. “The glory days of national cinema,” as he calls it. Though it’s easy to miss, check the hallway to the right of the exhibit for a five-minute documentary on the making of the exhibit’s vibrant billboards by Singapore’s last remaining billboard artist, Neo Chon Teck.

View the slideshow above for a glimpse of everything.

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Tags: Visual Art, frye art museum, First Thursday, Wing Luke Museum, Wing Luke Museum, Free Stuff, Chinese New Year

Ming Wong and the “Glory Days” of Singaporean Cinema

The Berlin-based Singaporean artist plays with gender, race, and movie-making in his new Frye exhibit.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Jan 18, 2011 at 03:00PM 0 Comments

Ming Wong: Life of Imitation comes to the Frye on January 22.

In the not-too-distant past, Singapore was a wild child: a tiny tropical port city with opium dens and brothels issuing siren calls to all the wild-eyed travelers. Its national cinema made movies with Malay Muslim women in bikinis go-go dancing on the beach—a Southeast Asian Beach Blanket Bingo. Sounds a bit different from the squeaky-clean, anti-gum-chewing metropolis we know now.

Artist Ming Wong appreciates the incongruity of his native Singapore; it’s an identity crisis that, as a Berlin-based, London-educated son of Chinese immigrants, he also feels keenly. With his award-winning exhibit Life of Imitation, opening at the Frye on January 22, he addresses identity in its many forms—language, race, gender, nationality—through the lens of Singaporean cinema of the 1950s and ’60s. “The glory days of national cinema,” he said over coffee this morning during Art Klatch at Café Presse.

“In the film industry you had a very unique situation,” Wong, 39, explained. “You had Chinese film producers who owned the cinemas. You had film crews, directors, and camera people from India. The actors were all Malay Muslim actors from Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, because the language used at the time was primarily Malaysian. You had this multicultural industry referencing films from Hollywood, European films, Chinese films, Japanese films. … It was a utopian collaboration.”

Things weren’t so rosy beyond the lens. The so-called “little red dot” of Singapore had long been occupied by foreign governments: first its northern neighbor Malaysia, then the British Empire, then the Japanese during World War II, then back to the Brits…you get the idea. Finally, in the late 1950s the territory began a bitter struggle for independence that didn’t end until 1965. For the nation of feuding immigrants, the great escape came through film. “There might be race riots during the day, but everyone went to the same cinema at night,” Wong said.

After Frye curator Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker experienced Life in Imitation at the Venice Biennale in 2009, she encouraged Wong and curator Tang Fu Kuen to bring the multimedia exhibit stateside. Now, for his first U.S. solo show, Wong reimagines Singaporean film and popular mid-century world cinema through multiscreen video installations; film memorabilia; and original billboards created by Singapore’s last surviving billboard painter. Fans of Douglas Sirk’s 1959 Hollywood melodrama Imitation of Life (the exhibit’s namesake) might recognize an iconic scene with a mixed-race daughter screaming at her black mother “I’m white. White!” Except in Wong’s re-creation, Chinese, Indian, and Malay men fill those roles. Men in drag? What will the Singaporean government think?

You’d be surprised: They funded the exhibit.

Ming Wong: Imitation of Life is at the Frye Art Museum from Jan 22-Feb 27.

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Tags: Visual Art, frye art museum, Ming Wong

Preview: Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History

The South Bronx teacher and “Kids of Survival” are still jammin’, 20 years on.

Posted by: Kaitlin Nunn on Jan 18, 2010 at 03:00PM 2 Comments

Tim Rollins and K.O.S., The Scarlet Letter—The Prison Door (after Nathaniel Hawthorne), 1992-93

K.O.S., or “Kids of Survival,” is a group of at-risk students from the South Bronx. Many of them have learning disabilities. The kids gather after school to listen as an art teacher reads aloud while they free-draw. What’s being read? Kafka’s Amerika, Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage. And their artwork is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern, and has been shown in over 100 galleries across the nation.

Credit their exposure to the teacher turning the pages: Tim Rollins, a School of Visual Arts (NY) professor who, from 1981, would inspire a generation of students to “make art…and history”. A lifelong fan of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rollins believed that “making history” meant giving a voice to the voiceless—a creative outlet to struggling students. So when a junior high school principal recruited then-26-year-old Rollins to develop a new art curriculum for his South Bronx classrooms, Rollins signed on. Just as King had hoped for “a beautiful symphony of brotherhood”, Rollins believed art could bring people together. He didn’t want to start just another art program—he wanted to create a community.

The K.O.S. took a fresh look at fine art by “jammin’”—a highly collaborative style of layering bold shapes over pages from classic texts, inviting conversation among students about the written word. In the piece I See the Promised Land, a vibrant red triangle dominates a white background. Lean in closer, and the text of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last sermon—the one delivered the night before he was assassinated—appears like a watermark beneath the geometric form. Both dynamic and static, this abstract work coaxes the eye upward to the tip, visually summarizing King’s belief that history is steamrolling toward justice.

Rollins’s work with K.O.S. has spanned two decades. He’s had the privilege of seeing K.O.S. expand to include workshops with other schools and arts institutions, while many former students have gone on to become successful artists. A retrospective, Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History, is on display at the Frye Art Museum from January 23–May 31. It’s the most comprehensive look at the group’s work to date; more than 20 years since their first exhibit, Rollins and K.O.S. show no signs of stopping. King would be proud.

Don’t miss Rollins’s talk with former K.O.S. student Angel Abreu on March 18 at 7pm, or the concurrent student exhibition, inspired by the K.O.S. model, that provides elementary through high school students the chance to display their work somewhere other than a refrigerator.

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Tags: Visual Art, Tim Rollins, K.O.S., Kids of Survival, frye art museum